This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
Photo: Jules' Undersea Lodge/Purcell Team/Alamy
Sure, people are great, but sometimes you really want to be an individual—alone. Solitude and quiet, unfortunately, are becoming a luxury commodity. Here are six out-of-the-way places offering unique experiences to the antisocial traveler.
Jules' Undersea Lodge
Photo, top: New Calmodoli Hermitage; ZUMA Press, Inc
No one's going to bother you at Jules Undersea Lodge in the Florida Keys, besides maybe a class of new scuba divers practicing in the lagoon outside your window. The lodge offers a hotel room that one must scuba dive down 20 feet to enter. The price includes underwater pizza delivery, too.
New Camaldoli Hermitage
When my neighbors crank up their gas-powered leaf blowers for the umpteenth time, I consider the finer points of joining the brothers of the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Camaldolese Benedictine hermitage overlooking the cliffs of Big Sur, California.
New Camaldoli's location was chosen for its isolation and beauty, and the place is accessible only by a winding mountain road. The dozen or so monks there take a vow of silence and spend their days in prayer and peaceful contemplation. They also welcome visitors to experience life at the hermitage at several guest lodges.
Dry Tortugas National Park; Sergey Chernyaev
The branch's founder, St. Romuald, instructed brothers to "put the whole world behind you and forget it," a task that's considerably easier when you're watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from a quiet bench with your back to the rest of the world.
Fort Jefferson and the Dry Tortugas
In 1846 the U.S. government began building an enormous brick fortress in the Dry Tortugas, a small uninhabited island chain about 70 miles west of Key West. The site was strategically important—but as the name implies, it didn't have a drop of fresh water.
The miserable and ill-fated fort was built largely by slaves and convicts. It was never fully completed because it began collapsing under its own weight, a metaphor so obvious it would be unsporting to joke about if the butt of the joke weren't the government. The fort remained in Union hands during the Civil War and doubled as a military prison, holding criminals and deserters. One of the Lincoln assassination conspirators was incarcerated there for several years after the war. Wracked by hurricanes and yellow fever outbreaks, the military garrison was drawn down and eventually abandoned. The fort's fearsome artillery batteries were melted for scrap or left to rust, never fired once.
Today this sinking government boondoggle can be your island getaway. Dry Tortugas National Park is one of the most remote national parks, reachable only via sea plane or a long ferry ride. The camping is primitive, but there's unmatched stargazing, terrific snorkeling right off the beach, and 70 miles of open ocean between you and someone taking a picture of a brunch plate.
recreation.gov
Fire Lookout Towers
Fire lookout towers in national forests have mostly been phased out by new technology. That means they're now available to rent for short stays. They're remote, they're inexpensive, and they offer stunning views.
"Boy, it sure seems like there's a lot of government stuff on this list for a libertarian magazine," you might be saying. Well, the government already paid to put all this stuff in the middle of nowhere. We might as well get some enjoyment out of it.
Everglades National Park; Francisco Blanco/Alamy
Besides, surely you'd like to brag to your friends about your vacation at Sex Peak Lookout in the Rocky Mountains. Availability and booking information for fire lookout towers can be found on recreation.gov.
Everglades National Park
If the price and logistics of getting to Fort Jefferson are too daunting, Everglades National Park offers similar isolationist pleasures for those willing to paddle for it. From the Flamingo Visitor Center at the southern tip of the Everglades, adventurous campers can launch a kayak or canoe and travel overwater to a number of isolated beaches and floating platforms known as "chickee huts."
It's not hard to find a remote backpacking spot, but camping on a chickee hut over the slick flat water of Florida Bay—the only place on earth where alligators and crocodiles coexist—is not something soon to be forgotten.
Jordan Salama
Frying Pan Tower
Want to get a taste of seasteading without the annoying paperwork of declaring yourself a micronation? Check out Frying Pan Tower, another derelict wonder. This one is a decommissioned Coast Guard light station 32 miles off the coast of North Carolina. A nonprofit group is now restoring the iconic lighthouse—named for its 72-foot-by-72-foot platform—and it hosts ecotourism adventure weekends for those whose idea of a fun vacation is skeet shooting 80 feet above the Atlantic Ocean and scuba diving with sand tiger sharks.
